Friday, July 17, 2009

This one is inspired by Facebook, where my friends list features such "real" names as "Aperson" and "Crazyknight":

Weekend Assignment: #276: Create an alias for yourself - not one you're already using or planning to use, but a temporary one for this assignment. Tell us the name you've chosen and why, and under what circumstances, real or imaginary, you'd ever use a fake name or identity. If you want to create an entire fake identity for your entry, so much the better!Extra Credit: Have you ever used a pseudonym anywhere other than online?

It's funny, considering my tendency to plaster my real name all over everything I do; but I have used pseudonyms and aliases rather a lot over the years. When I was eight years old and the Adam West version of Batman was on tv, I tried to create a secret identity of my own, as Bat Friend. I created a costume (old tights made a pretty good cowl) and later led my two blindfolded friends to a secret lair, where they promptly crushed my fantasy by calling me Karen. Ah, well! In junior high I tried to cultivate the name Casey Jensen as a nickname and future pen name. As an adult I wrote a foreword to a book about the Beatles under the name Karen C King, or possibly K.C King, I forget which. And then there's my piratical alter ego, Black Rose Kate, who occasionally pops up in my blogs to comment on the modern world.

But this is about creating a new alias. There are all sorts of online name generators to give users their stripper name, their hobbit name, thir vampire name, their Star Wars name, etc. There's even one that creates pseudo-Dickensian or Austinesque names. I don't really want to play at being Ida Pledgood, though, so let me try something else. Oh, I've got it!

Luna M. Jones. Born: May 10, 1948 in Ithaca, NY. The third daughter of two academics, I attended Cornell University, only to be expelled my senior year for participating in a sit-in in the assistant chancellor's office. Awkardly, the assistant chancellor was my dad. My boyfriend at the time, Doug, moved to Canada two weeks later to avoid the draft. I stayed behind, taking a job in an ice cream factory and writing political thrillers in between shifts. The most famous of these, The Ivy Proclamation, was on the New York Times bestseller list for 39 weeks. Unfortunately for my bank account, the movie version fell through when Keanu Reaves had a falling out with the director and left the project.

I've been divorced twice and widowed once, but recently reconnected with Doug, the inventor of the telephone router, who receives the occasional death threat when people learn of his achievement. We're taking our relationship one day at a time. My daughter, Maxie Corrigan, manages a surf shop in Cape Canaveral. She's also the mother of three boys, Sam, Dave and Jack. Sam and Dave are identical twins. They'll be 14 years old next week, and Max has promised to take them hang gliding hang gliding on weekends. Sounds great to me; I earned my pilot's license While researching my third book, but I don't get to fly as often as I'd like. My sisters, Betel and Marte, teach astronomy and scuba diving, respectively, so we pretty much have all the elevations covered: sea, sky and space!

Having created Luna (who is named for a Tucson street, by the way, not a Harry Potter character), what would I do with her? I suppose I would set her up with her own blog, or even attempt to write one of her books. But more likely I wouldn't use her as an alias, except to write first person fiction about her.

Your turn! Your assignment is to either make up or generate a fake name, and tell us what you'd use it for. You can be as realistic or as wildly unrealistic as you like. Tell us about it in your blog, and please include a link to this entry. Then please come back here, and leave a link to your specific blog entry in the comments below. Please get your entry in by Thursday evening. Meanwhile, there's last week's Assignment to wrap up:

On the occasional hot days we have had, we have spent in the ocean. The water was refreshing and actually warmer than the air. While at home at Moms, we must survive with an open window and an ancient fan. My mother doesn’t like air conditioning so we all suffer.

We have two seasons: Hot (Summer) and Less Hot (Winter, ostensibly). Ski season for us is a snow flurry. Oh, we get a few cold nights - perhaps enough to freeze the early blooms on the fruit trees. Spring and Fall each last for about two weeks.

The Southern California dream: the endless summer. Bright, comfortably warm days hanging out at the beach, cool and pleasant evenings, no need to make contingency plans in case of rain. It's reality - if you're lucky enough to live in the stretch of Southern California west of the mountains and east of the Pacific Ocean. In some places, that perfect-climate range is only a few miles wide, and even that's not always perfect.... I don't live in that special part of SoCal, though.

There are a lot of people around here complaining about the lack of heat, but, I'm sorry, those people are just plain wrong. What is so wrong with it being warm enough to wear shorts, but not so warm that you can't go to the end of the driveway with out a water station set up there?

That's it for now! As always, I'm looking for suggestions for future Weekend Assignments, and also for more of you to participate in writing the entries. Come on - as good the our three stalwarts above are, we'd love to hear from YOU as well. Thanks!

About Me

Author of magazine articles, trading cards, and the Mâvarin novels. Intermittently seeking an agent and a publisher. Accountant, church webmaster, ex-fanzine editor. Married since 1979, one husband, no kids, two dogs, no cats.
Email is mavarin2 at gmail.com. Home is Casa Blocher, better known as The Museum of the Weird. Welcome!

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Comments and civil discussion are ecstatically welcomed here, including polite criticism and dissenting opinions. Comment spam and insults, however, will be deleted unless I'm feeling extra charitable. To avoid your comment being deleted as spam, prove to me that you actually read the entry by responding to something specific. Thanks! - Karen